He Grew Up Kind
by thesquiglet
Summary: At the age of sixteen, Dirk makes a choice


**Hello I hope you have all had an absolutely amazing January and ready for a great February! This show is so utterly pure that I wrote this for it, watch it on Netlfix if you can!**

For as long as he could remember, Dirk lived in fear. Constant, all encompassing fear. Sometimes even now in his adult life he felt it press against him. Back when he practically lived in Blackwing, there hadn't been a moment or place where he felt safe enough to catch his breath. Nowhere he felt comforted.

Instead as he grew up and flitted about his room underneath their 'care', he tried to focus on all the other things – like the fact he was NOT psychic no matter how many bloody tests they were doing to prove it – and things like his parents, getting out of Blackwing...maybe even...having a friend one day. He'd always wondered what having a friend would be like. He reckoned they'd be fantastic..amd willing to put up with him! Maybe they'd be an assistant, a really good one! Dirk had always loved the thought of having someone by his side helping. Not being..alone.

Even as he watched the other people go past him with sullen eyes and that recognisable sinking smile within the confines of this stupid scary building, he couldn't help it. Here was suffering. And there was no-one. No-one for any of them. Just contempt, and a promise if they didn't obey there'd be a punishment – Dirk still got nightmares about them, endless nights tossing and turning praying for sleep. Wake-less dreams about **that** word. Priest. Friedrich. Riggins and Priest's beguiling smile's. Needles. People reminding him this was all his fault. His fault his parents were dead and that he deserved to be fed lies and being alone. He hadn't solved their puzzle. He needed punishing -

All because they had thought his hunches would lead to something else. Would lead to a discovery that he was psychic, which he was not! He was most defintely certainly not! He had hoped but sadly still knowing there weren't others like him going through this. Was their forever normal?

No-one cared. No-one came. No-one came to help protect his broken yet still breaking heart.

Dirk cried silently. Today had been his birthday and he had got everything wrong. There was nothing, not even Riggins bringing him his usual cupcake to celebrate. But then again Riggins had promised he would be out of here by his teens. He lied. He kept promises he couldn't keep. Riggins kept his cards close to his heart..and never showed anything for it. He hid his real caring for a simple experiment, to find results..if he ever had any to begin with. Dirk chastised himself, there was some semblance of kindness in people but it was just finding it, and Riggins did show some of it sometimes. Just because he was locked up didn't mean his heart should be.

That was his realisation. Here trapped in these walls he came to it. Why *was* he letting his heart be captured like this? Why was letting Blackwing and it's occupants take everything away from him including the side that liked to see the good side in people, the kind in them. The kind he adored. The kind he thought he'd known before here. They'd already taken his first name and twisted it into something he never wanted to visit again, then they'd taken his health so he was now skinny as a rake, and then as a final screw you they'd taken his happiness and instead it replaced with nightmares. Never ending nightmares. Nightmares coupled with fear and panic. There wasn't anything left for him to be.

Well no more he decided. No bloody more. He'd find something Blackwing couldn't take from him.

Drying his eyes he stood up straight. At the age of sixteen feeling braver and even more determined than ever, he made his choice. He made that resolve, he chose a different name for himself. One they couldn't erase.

Dirk Gently was going to grow up kind.

He was going to see the best in people – especially in the ones who couldn't or thought they didn't deserve it when they really, really absolutely did – use whatever he had for good. He was going to be better than his past, better than the old him and bigger than the people who threatened to bring him down. Better than Blackwing. This to Dirk felt right. Balanced. The universe righted itself. It seemed to push him a little further towards something else.

He had the hunches that seemed to draw him into disarray – ever since he was tiny in fact - but always seemed to help, like he was piecing together clues...like a policeman would. Something that brought a smile to the person he had helped. Something that made the hunches connecting to other moments worth it.

Although a policeman drifted far away from being what Dirk wanted. He knew he wanted to help people, he knew the hunches lead him to fixing things, restore things to where they needed to be but you could do it without the actual police work he was sure, how else would he have ended up here otherwise? He wanted to be kind. And working with others might not be the best option right now, the universe seemed to want him alone. but why would you want to be friends with someone who got mysteries solved by the interconnectedness of the universe itself, like being put in the stream of creation with only some say in what happened. He just wanted to help people in trouble, who needed the support and comfort like how he would have wanted by once the others who hadn't helped him. It was like a flickering torch in a tunnel suddenly deciding to work now beaming at it's brightest, batteries restored.

A detective. YES. Yes that was it. A detective solved clues and mysteries and all the ones he had happened to see once or twice on video and they all seemed really cool and they seemed happy to be helping and they didn't have to wear uniforms. But he was defintely sure coming back to his thoughts beforehand that you didn't need fingerprints or any of that other stuff they seemed to delay their time with. Honestly everything could be solved by connecting it all together without it.

He would be the bestest, kindest detective ever – holistically speaking of course, – and be there for his clients, for whoever or whatever hired his services.

No matter what happened now – whether he did get out or not and secretly he prayed he would. So many cases would go without his solving them, he could feel it, that stream of creation feeling again – he knew he could do this. He could do this. Here in these grey walls and fairly going gradually numb arm, he was from now on Dirk Gently – Holistic Detective.

The lost smile came crawling back to him slowly, the heart breaking started to form in way of something happier, and he had a hunch that this was definitely the best birthday for himself so far. Even without a cupcake and that was saying something because sweets were something hard to come by and the best - or so he'd been told by Riggins.

He'd find friends. He'd find caring and happiness. He'd find someone who wanted to be around him, and not tell him anything akin to the word 'experiment' or yell or anything of the sort. He'd leave the rest of his time here in the dust, find everything he'd lost.

He'd leave Blackwing with it's cruelness. Strip everything away. A whole new life. Free. Okay. Solving things the universe wanted him to. Taking on the things no-one else would touch.

At the age of sixteen Dirk Gently made two of his biggest decisions that would shape his life from then on, he would be a detective and a good one, and the second...

Dirk Gently would grow up kind.


End file.
